Board 8 > My girlfriend and I bought 16 board games at GenCon

(+) Yeah! (+)

Not shown are the Devil's Dandy Dogs and a Red Dragon Inn expac. Shown also includes games we just haven't played yet.

I really don't want to look at my credit card statement yet, but since we have so many, we decided to do a draft to determine the order in which we play things. So... Playthrough topic? If people seem interested I'll give some updates on how we enjoy some of these as we play through them.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/forum/6/69123bb2.jpg

Endangered

First that we played was Endangered, a co-op game that combines dice chance, card draw, action taking, and some strategy all with a conservationist coat.

The game is simple enough - roll 3 dice, then take 3 actions. You place your die on an action card that you haven't taken yet (future actions must be higher than your die). Gain money, move animals, clear deforestation, draw and play cards (which usually add more actions to take), and exert influence on one of 6 ambassadors. After so many years(rounds), you check the victory conditions on the ambassadors and win if you pass 4. You have two rounds to do that.

Meanwhiles, at ends of turns, animals can mate or not, deforestation happens, and tigers die.

We actually thought we were doing well then barely didn't win one ambassador due to a bad dice roll, then got demolished by the end-of-turn deforestation and effects and then barely didn't win by another bad dice roll in the second round of checking for victory. So the tigers died :(

That said, it was fun. It wasn't too easy, random chance worked against us, we had a variety of actions to take, and it never felt like we were too ahead or behind. There were times where it seemed like we could coach the other, and I could see a bully at a table coaching the whole game, but there was enough random chance that there wasn't a pure best move at any given turn.

The second module included is for Sea Otters, and we picked up a Butterfly module as well. I'll check in if we do either at some point, but I am game to play again. It seems like a game we'll be able to pull out with friends rather easily as well.

Rating: 6.5-7/10

Oh no, otters

I'm here to learn about everything except for Sonic Roll

never heard of most of these

endangered sounds so cute! the concept also reminds me of daybreak

Oooh tag for new board game reccos

tag for deckbuilder

Definitely interested in hearing Arborea thoughts

KommunistKoala posted...

Definitely interested in hearing Arborea thoughts

Agreed. Seems very cool but I just get a headache looking at the board.

Spirit Island is always a good time in spite of the massive overhead at pretty much every turn.

SeabassDebeste posted...

never heard of most of these

endangered sounds so cute! the concept also reminds me of daybreak

It is kind of sad. Your animals die a lot.

Im not sure it has a huge amount of replayability. I'll have to see how the second module feels. If it feels good, then I can see maybe twice per module or three times, which isn't great but

Hell yeah Doomlings

That's one of the few games my mom and sister are opening to playing beyond fairly simple card games

Tag

Tag for board games

Lots of good looking stuff there.

A+ doomlings purchase. Amazing game. Hope you did the scavenger hunt and got the Seconder Holofoil card as well. Wife and I have intense doomling tournaments.

Obellisk posted...

Wife and I have intense doomling tournaments.

is that what the kids are calling it these days

tag. I recently got 10ish board game from dice tower east + someone else that i need to play. I don't get to play that often though

Tried to introduce Doomlings to the family as I was getting bored of the usual ones but the one time we played it was a massive flop and I was sad. Haven't brought up trying again since. =(

someone please give me the pitch for Doomlings

I also went to gencon and bought some stuff so Im just gonna shamelessly drop a gencon haul pichttps://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/forum/b/b3b08996.jpg

Tag

Eddv posted...

I also went to gencon and bought some stuff so Im just gonna shamelessly drop a gencon haul

I am so upset that I didn't pull the trigger on the Arcs Kickstarter and now have to wait another ~two months for my retail preorder. Looks so damn good.

Oh, my gf picked up Pirate Borg. We both played the game at GenCon and had a great time.

Tag for boardgames!

The next game will probably be Fire Tower.

Tag, I have played very few but heard of others

We played Fire Tower, but I wanted to wait until we played with the expansion or with more people before I rated it. It seems like it'd be more fun with more than 2.

Fire Tower

So Fire Tower is a simple game that looks real pretty. There's a board that's a forest, and four Fire Towers in the corners - and a big fire in the middle. The fire uses these little orange plastic pieces that catch light well and look quite pretty.

Anyway, the gameplay is this: Add one fire gem to the board in the direction the wind is blowing, then play a card. There are water cards to put out fire, fire cards to spread fire, firebreak cards to cut down some forest and prevent fire from spreading there, and directional cards to change which way the wind is blowing. Your goal is to light the other towers on fire.

So yeah, it's a pretty looking game. With two players, it just seemed to progress with little interaction as it was just luck of where the wind was blowing combined with getting the right cards to spread fire. Having to use a turn to change the wind direction doesn't feel the best. With four players, it seemed to have more variability and interest, but our group both teamed up on one person - and then refused to knock someone out of the game until it was the only thing to do.

I imagine being knocked out right away is a lame drawback, but there is an extra mechanic in place for the first two people knocked out to still be able to win the game, by, I think, burning both remaining towers simultaneously? So it removes the drawback that comes from three people dogpiling the other, though we did not use these rules when we played.

Overall, it wasn't the most fun game, but it was easy enough to pop out that we'll likely pull it out again in the future.

Rating: 5.5

HanOfTheNekos posted...

I imagine being knocked out right away is a lame drawback

The one time I played Fire Tower, this is exactly what happened to me. I can confirm it was lame lol.

Definitely a pretty looking game though, I love the little fire pieces.

my partner and i played fire tower ages ago at gencon with the designers. one of the players died and became a ghost and they actually won, which even the designers said they'd never seen before. can confirm that after we bought the game and played it at home, that it never really happened and that the game itself wasn't quite as awesome as its components.

Surprise another game!

Tiny Epic Dungeons

So this company makes a number of "Tiny Epic __" games that come in a small box, supposedly are easy to learn, supposedly are quick to play. Nice little co-op ventures. Now, we did two rounds of this, and hours passed... 30-60m may only be accurate if you know the game already. We certainly had issues figuring out the rules and had to play two whole rounds to get comfortable. And, again, that was hours.

So the game takes place in a little dungeon, and each room is a tile card that gets laid down when you explore. It's limited to a 7x7 grid (won't take up the whole thing). You have a unique hero with some gear and a unique ability, and on your turn you can move around, explore, and take an action - which is, like, attacking, disarming a trap, etc... you need to explore and find all the Minions in the dungeon to kill, so that you can open the way to the Boss Lair and defeat the boss. There is a grid with a torch on it, and it falls turn by turn - if it hits the bottom, you lose. Each time it falls, it might make goblins appear or all enemies act.

I think my main issue with the game so far is that it seems as though you can't or shouldn't do as much as there are options in the game. For example, moving seems neat - but if you move into an unrevealed chamber and an enemy appears, you turn ends. You can drop your torch by one level to reveal adjacent rooms, but that feels like a bad tradeoff. So you end up in these rooms with enemies, and you can attack them - goblins die in one hit and you get a reward, so that's not so bad, but even still, it limits how you go, since your turns become "walk until you find a goblin then kill it". Which you can't do if a goblin spawns from the entrance and you have to go kill that.

You can disarm traps, but doing checks to pass traps doesn't take an action, so why waste the time? Also, every time you do a skill check (which bypassing a trap is), on a success, you can gain HP and Focus (used to do abilities) back. So why ever disarm them? You get rewards of items or spells, but f

Our first time playing, we encountered both Minions at once, and ran out of torch and lost. Our second time, we got to the boss - and then lost because we couldn't hurt him quicker than he could heal, and got swarmed by goblins who just knocked us down - we get up on our turn, then we got knocked down again.

We're curious to try playing two heroes apiece to see how that plays - I don't know if it's necessary. Playing just the one seemed fine since I could focus on getting my hero buffed up - and STILL didn't get enough items - but maybe it's more fun or balanced that way.

Either way, the game was fun enough, but I'm curious to discover if the difficulty comes from luck of getting good items, or if it's more good decision making. I haven't been sold on any further games by the publisher, but maybe we'll enjoy future playthroughs enough to delve further.

Also, need to find out how much replayability there is.

Rating: 7

i've played one tiny epic... dungeons maybe? was a pretty decent time!

We played Aqua! I'm bumping to remind myself to write about it later.

That being said, we have played Tiny Epic Dungeons a few times and never beat it. I think I enjoy it more than my partner. She thinks the game is imbalanced. I think we just make bad decisions and get bad luck.

those look like expensive hauls

It was a little pricey...

Aqua
Take Carcassonne, but make it sea life.

It's really just that kind of Euro.

You have a tile with six different colors of coral on it, and each round, on your turn, you take a piece of coral from the bank and attach it to your tile where the colors match. The pieces are hexagons. There are a few ways to build up points.

If you create a small hexagon of one color, then a small critter comes to live there.
If you put enough small critters adjacent to each other that they make a certain shape, you put a larger critter stacked on top of the small one.
If you make a non-hexagon string of at least 4 pieces of coral attached, then every small critter they're adjacent to gets scored again.

That's the basic conceit. There are additional score tiles that change extra things that scored, but for the most part, it's tile laying and animal making.

Aesthetically, it's very nice. I love underwater theming and getting to put some turtle and seahorse tiles on my board, then stack a hammerhead on top is great.

The game is designed where everyone gets only 17 turns. This is fine, though I'd like to try the game with a few more turns. I don't know if my partner wants to play it again with just us though.

If you like Euros, don't mind them being pretty simple, and want some sea life, then this game is for you. If you hate Carcassonne, then pass!

Rating: 7.5

hey now carcassonne has squares, not hexes!

Does everyone have their own board/Tableau of coral they are building up in Aqua? Or is there only one collective tile area that all players build on?

Its the shared building area that makes Carcassonne special, and After all these years, I'm genuinely surprised at how few games have even attempted that same shared building area instead of everyone building their own separate map.

many game have trended away from that sort of direct interaction since carcassonne's time!

cyko posted...

Does everyone have their own board/Tableau of coral they are building up in Aqua? Or is there only one collective tile area that all players build on?

Its the shared building area that makes Carcassonne special, and After all these years, I'm genuinely surprised at how few games have even attempted that same shared building area instead of everyone building their own separate map.

They have their own, and that's a fair point. Sharing the map in Carcassonne is pretty neat. Too many Euros are simply playing the same game at the same time.